Death from the Skies!

We're all going to die. Not in 2012. Not any time soon for most of us. But eventually something catastrophic will happen and life, indeed the Earth, as we know it cease to exist. Luckily, since nobody reading this will likely be around to witness it, we have bad astronomer Phil Plait to explain how it will all go down.

Plait walks us through several doomsday scenarios from extinction-causing impacts to being cooked by cosmic rays to encounters with alien life. In each case, the reader is given the basics to understand the disaster being explored, a detailed explanation of how it might happen, how the human race might prepare for or prevent the particular destruction (if at all) and odds of it happening.

This is first and foremost a science book, and Plait delves into the physics and astronomy with vigor. What exactly is happening at the centre of a star? How is a black hole formed, and what would happen if we fell into one? While some of it might be daunting, it's all written in an easy-to-read and engaging style, that at times feels more like reading good science fiction than science fact. Each scenario is prefaced with a vignette of how it might look if you were caught in the middle of it, and even the cover evokes warm memories of old sci-fi B-movies.

Death from the Skies! may be one of the best science books I've read. Educational and entertaining, it's a must read if you have any interest in astronomy and astrophysics - and possibly even if you don't.

The universe is a harsh and violent place, and sooner or later it will get us. Phil Plait teaches how it will happen, and somehow makes you wish you'll still be around to witness it.

Death from the Skies! by Philip Plait

The Geeks' Guide to World Domination

While not actually giving tips for world domination, The Geeks' Guide... by Garth Sundem is an interesting book for the trivially minded. Within its pages, it contains 314(.1516?) short entries about pop-culture, science, brain teasers and other geekery ranging from useful Klingon phrases to how to balance a chemical equation. It's essentially a bathroom book - something you can grab and open up to find an interest fact or list.

The downside (there's always a downside) is that over the course of reading it I caught at least 3 factual errors. Granted, one I wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't come up in a recent round of pub trivia, but another was an obviously imbalanced chemical equation and the third was something any self-respecting geek should know.
And mistakes are pretty much a fatal flaw for what is essentially a trivia book.

Now saying one wrong thing (or three) doesn't make everything in the book wrong. However trivia, whether in a book or contest form, attracts people (myself included) who get caught up in the details and pride themselves on getting them right. I've been to more than a few trivia contests that have featured heated debates, either amongst teammates or with the quizmaster, over minutia. (The irony being that that trivia is, well, trivial and not worth heated argument) The attitude is summed up in a quote notably missing from The Geeks' Guide's quotable Futurama: "[Y]ou are technically correct – the best kind of correct!"

So if you're one of those people who will be bothered finding one or two errors in a bathroom reader (or not finding them, but knowing they're there) it's probably best to skip this one. But if you can overlook some minor mistakes to find out how to load a pair of dice, learn tongue twisters in foreign languages or discover a quick trick for dividing by 7 then it might be worth checking out - at least for those moments when you're on the can.

The Geeks' Guide to World Domination by Garth Sundem

Some of the entries, and some not in the book, can be read at the author's blog.

In Defense of Food

I've enjoyed the writing of Michael Pollan in the past, mainly his column in the New York Times Magazine. He writes eloquently and interestingly about food. In Defense of Food is my first experience with his book-length writing.

The book itself is summarized succinctly on the cover: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." It sounds like reasonable advice, and inside he makes the case for the pithy slogan. He argues that much of what we eat is not food and attacks the Western Diet and the nutritionism movement that focuses on individual compounds and not on whole foods. He describes what he calls "The American paradox": despite a preoccupation with health and nutrition, the US increasingly unhealthy, and proposes some dietary changes to address that fact, elaborating on the cover's mantra. (There's no reason to think this doesn't apply to Canadians as well)

Unfortunately, this book got under my skin right from the start. From the beginning, there is an anti-science tone, even putting the word in scare quotes, "advising you to reject the advice of science and industry" and arguing that current limitations of scientific understanding mean it's not enough to go by when deciding what to eat. Well, if not science then what? "Tradition and common sense" is the answer. That sounds good, and may even be a reasonable starting point but outside scientific rationalism, tradition and common sense can lead down the path to pseudoscience. And we see this fairly often with unproven traditional medicines that "have been used for thousands of years!"

In fairness, he's mostly speaking about science in a narrower sense and uses some science to back his arguments, but the opening tone feels otherwise. The real science he's attacking is reductionist nutritionism, the kind of thinking that gives us 'trans-fats are bad', 'eat more omega-3s', etc., distilling food down into more basic elements. It's not hard to be frustrated by reports of what's good or bad for you changing seemingly daily, and he makes a reasonable case for rethinking that approach. Unfortunately, this poses another problem for Pollan. He attempts to debunk nutritional science but at the same time depends on it to support his own arguments about what kind of food we should be eating. The inconsistency is obvious, and Pollan himself is aware of it. He does attempt to address this problem, but never really succeeds at doing it satisfactorily (at least for me).

This isn't the only logical flaw in his thesis. He appeals to tradition, but what gets traditions started? How did our ancestors know what works and what doesn't? How do we figure it out to start new traditions? Trial and error is one way, and historically possibly the main way, these things have been worked out. For example, one complaint is that our bodies aren't used to the new Western diet and its manufactured foods, we get sicker because of it (eg. increased rates of obesity and diabetes) and we should move back to eating "real" food. This may well be true, but as he also notes, the same thing happened when cow (and other animal) milk was introduced to the human diet. Now, milk seems as natural and wholesome a food as any other, but would Pollan have argued against milk as a food if he were around back then? "We've adapted!" seems like a probable defense, but how do you adapt or learn or improve without trying new things?

While this all seems quite negative, the book was interesting and easy-to-read, even if some of the support for the thesis had holes. Despite some flawed argumentation, In Defense of Food does offer some food for thought regarding our philosophy towards food - what it is and how to think about it - even if you walk away not agreeing.

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan